Re: [Critical-Realism] Comment re: holism

["Mervyn Hartwig" <mh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Martha!

Just one comment re:

> I think that RB theorizes that which is transhistorical about human social
> organization;  what must social reality be like for social science to be
> possible. Am I right?   I had some other ideas about this issue but this
> is
> enough for now.

I think the transhistorical bit is right in the sense of features at a
highly abstract level that any society must possess -- not for social
science to be possible however (although RB does of course ask that
question) but given the nature of human intentional activity (praxis) ---
features which will always of course be complexly mediated in concrete
historical situations. In PON and ff. the major premise is human intentional
activty as such, in RTS it is human intentional activity as exemplified in 
scientific experimentation (intentional experimental activity). In this 
respect there is thus fundamental continuity to the mode of proceeding 
throughout.

Mervyn




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "GIMENEZ MARTHA E" <Martha.Gimenez@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List"
<critical-realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2007 7:52 PM
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Comment re: holism


>I know this is very late in the conversation but, for many reasons, I have
> been unable to keep up; it is only this past Sunday that I have been able
> to read RTS' preface, introduction and chapter 1 prior to tackling all the
> messages!!! That took two days.  Whew! It was work!  There are issues I
> want to bring up eventually about this first part of the readings and hope
> you do not mind my being late most of the time.  I need to spend more time
> in this processes than many of you because I am a sociologist, not a
> philosopher.
>
> On Mon, 4 Jun 2007, Howard Engelskirchen wrote:
> ......
>> This much we can be clear on -- there's methodological individualism,
>> there's holism associated with sociological traditions like that of
>> Durkheim, and there's a relational approach associated with Marx.  That's
>> PON's analysis.
>
> In an article by Levine, Sober and Wright (New Left Review 162 1987),
> "Marxism and Methological Individualism," they posit four approaches:
> atomism, holism, methodological individualism and anti-reductionism.
> They are critical of methodological individualists who claim that social
> explanations can and must be reduced to microfoundations.  They argue that
> some social phenomena can thus be reduced while others cannot and that
> both kinds are equally important in social science.  Using the distinction
> between types and tokens, they argue that that types (for example, gender
> inequality, capitalism, the strike as a tool of labor struggle) are
> irreducible to microfoundations and, as I understand it, need to be
> explained as the effect of macro level structures and processes. On the
> other hand, tokens or specific instances of a type (e.g., the existence of
> gender inequality in a given institution) necessitates a micro-level
> explanation, for not all institutions are similar in that respect;  for
> example, in any given university, departments vary in their degree of
> gender inequality and that variation responds to the activities of
> identifiable individuals in positions of power.
>
>> Perhaps Marx's 'Method of Political Economy' from the
>> Introduction to the Grundrisse, can help.  Tendencies we might call
>> holist
>> are those that attribute reality to the thing concepts like "population"
>> refer to.  We want to treat population as a thing we can measure,
>> describe,
>> etc.  But the problem is that just like that, without more, the concept
>> is
>> too vague, it doesn't refer to anything that is causally potent that
>> would
>> help us explain.  It's a starting point, but to make it work, we need to
>> break it down into the relations of which it is composed.
>
> You are right;  Marx is critical of a social science that starts "post
> festum;"  one must identify the relations that result in what can be
> observed at a common sense level or taken for granted level.  I have read
> and reread this section of the Grundrisse and it is soooo complicated -
> One of the problems I have with it is that Marx is exceedingly cryptic
> and does not tell how one can identify those relations.  To do so
> presupposes a theory of the mode of production and its potential effects
> at the level of what sociologists, a la Durkheim, call "social facts."
> For Marx, I conclude though he does not say so explicitly, method
> presupposes theory and his theories are always about historically specific
> social configurations (i.e., capitalism, feudalism).
>
> I think that RB theorizes that which is transhistorical about human social
> organization;  what must social reality be like for social science to be
> possible. Am I right?   I had some other ideas about this issue but this
> is
> enough for now.
>
> Martha
>
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